Category: Uncategorized

Accidental awkward eye contact

Real Social Skills

There some situations in which eye contact is considered inappropriate.

In neurotypical body language, initiating eye contact with someone means that you want to interact with them. It’s often the first stage of a conversation, or of flirtation.

This can lead to awkward situations for those of us who don’t make eye contact naturally and don’t have it in mind much. 

For instance, on the subway it is not considered appropriate to make eye contact with strangers. On the subway, people are supposed to leave each other alone.

People who make eye contact naturally kind of know where not to look, and don’t have to think about it much. For people who don’t use eye contact as a natural part of their communication, avoiding inappropriate eye contact can actually be difficult, since they don’t automatically pay attention to where not to look. 

If you look in the direction that would be for eye contact if you did that sort of thing, people will interpret it as an attempt to initiate eye contact with them. And they will often look back and smile weakly, because it is considered rude to ignore eye contact. But since they don’t want to talk to you, and it’s in a situation in which people expect not to talk to each other, it’s invasive.

For that reason, if you have this problem, it might help to intentionally figure out some other place to look in order to avoid inappropriate eye contact. (Eg, your bag, your phone, the floor, the ads).

About oppression analogies

Real Social Skills

This is a way different groups run into conflicts.

  • One group has seen historical discussions of something bad that used to happen to another group
  • They think this is over
  • They want to use this as an analogy for a group they are part of
  • So they say “well, what if x happened to that group?”
  • and then they don’t realize that actually, this thing still happens to that group all the time
  • and so they end up hurting the other group by erasing their experiences

Some common examples:

  • LGBT groups that say that they are the new civil rights movement, as though racism and discrimination have ended
  • Any time one group says “just substitute black for [my group] and no one would think this was ok (because there are still a lot of anti-black racists who do that thing; this isn’t over)
  • People using an analogy to the n-word to object to the way another group is discriminated against. (This is bad because the n-word is still routinely used against black people, and saying it still hurts people even if you think you aren’t racist)
  • Mental health advocates who say that people don’t get blamed for physical illness, so they shouldn’t be blamed for mental illness either (people get blamed for phyiscal illness all the time, especially chronic illness)
  • Eg "Imagine if you were blamed for having cancer”. 
  • Autistic advocates who say that asking them to make eye contact while talking is like asking someone with motor coordination problems to do pushups (which is a thing that happens too)
  • Comparing things the the Holocaust that aren’t similar (abortion opponents and animal rights activists often make these sorts of comparisons)

These are some examples I know about, and I know there are many I do not know about. What are some others? (And did I get any of these wrong?)

Don’t touch wheelchairs without permission

Real Social Skills

Touching someone’s wheelchair, or other mobility equipment, is a really big deal. You shouldn’t ever do this without permission.

Part of the reason this is a big deal is that most mobility equipment users experience their mobility device as part of their body. It’s invasive and bad to touch people without their permission.

But it’s actually even more wrong to touch mobility equipment without permission than it is to touch someone without permission generally. 

Messing up someone’s mobility equipment means they can’t get around. It can also sometimes cause immediate injury. It can also lead to injury by making the equipment less safe to use (for instance, if you screw up someone’s cushion and they can’t afford to get it fixed right away, that could cause a pressure sore.)

Touching mobility equipment without permission is a threat to use dangerous force and hurt someone or leave them stranded. Even if you don’t mean to be threatening. Even if you think you’re helping the person. Even if you think you’d never hurt anyone. It’s never ok to make another person that vulnerable without their permission (unless someone else is physically attacking you and you are in danger to the point that violent self-defense is justified.).

It’s sort of like… you don’t touch people without their permission. And you *especially* don’t grab someone without permission. And you *especially espeically* don’t put your hand on someone’s throat without permission. 

Moving someone’s mobility equipment without permission is like attacking someone with handcuffs. (Or worse).

Don’t do it.

The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere

Real Social Skills

“I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can’t live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it? It’s right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn’t live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it it would get them serious trouble.

Utah Phillips, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”

Just about everyone who has been the victim of abuse, or has lived through something horrible, has been told that they need to stop living in the past. That they need to get over it and move on already, because things are different now.

But the past didn’t go anywhere. It’s still right here, right now. Everything that happened to you, everything they did to you – it all stays happened. And it never stops mattering. Because going through trauma changes things permanently. (and so does every other type of experience, for that matter. But not in the same way).

The past doesn’t have to stop mattering, and you don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t matter anymore. You can build a life, and make good things happen for yourself, even though the past didn’t go anywhere and it never stops mattering.

Even if sometimes you wake up terrified, even if you bear scars, even if you’ve lost a lot of abilities you once treasured, even if you’ve lost your community and everyone you once thought you could count on.

Life is still worth living, and good things are still possible. Even though the past didn’t go anywhere. And acknowledging that the past is still there and that it still matters makes it more possible to rebuild, not less.

Just like you can’t live in a physical abstraction and accepting the reality of your physical body and its limits makes life better, you can’t live in an abstraction of an imaginary theoretical mind that you might have had without the trauma. You have to live as the person you are, and build from there.

And your live is worthwhile, and important, even if some things never heal. The past didn’t go anywhere, but you can keep going.

Hunger can impair communication

Real Social Skills

Some people who can usually use language to communicate lose a lot of their words if they get too hungry.

When you’re hungry, you don’t have as many cognitive resources available, and some of what is available gets taken up by dealing with hunger. For some people, this can mean that the resources needed for language simply aren’t there.

If you’re finding that you often can’t speak well in the middle of the day, it’s possible that you are forgetting to eat. This might be the case even if you don’t feel hungry.

If you get used to not eating properly, it can be hard to notice hunger. If you’re too hungry for too long, sometimes you get used to automatically ignoring the sensations of hunger, which can make them hard to identify.

If you’re experiencing sudden cognitive or communication impairment, and you haven’t eaten recently, it might be a side effect of hunger. Sometimes, if you get too accustomed to the sensations of hunger, you don’t notice feeling hungry until it stops you from thinking well.

If you used to be able to use language reliably but are experiencing seriously diminished ability, it might mean that you haven’t been eating properly for a long time.

Hunger isn’t the only reason some people have intermittent language problems, and it’s not the only reason people lose language skills in a longer-term way. But it’s very common for people with communication disabilities to have dramatically worse communication problems when they are chronically hungry.

If you’re having communication problems that seem to be more severe than you expect, it’s worth checking to see if you’re also having trouble eating enough. And if you are, it’s worth making fixing that a priority.

A point of clarification

Real Social Skills

I’m not opposed to forgiveness.

Or to salvaging relationships in which someone hurt you.

Both can be good in a lot of circumstances. People hurt each other, and often it’s something that people can get past and fix.

It’s just that: people put a lot of pressure on people who have been hurt to forgive and/or patch things up. Even to the point of telling them that they’ll never be happy until they do.

And sometimes, forgiving is a bad idea. Sometimes attempting to patch things up would make things a lot worse.

This is a decision someone should be making for themself, and it’s important to be aware that both options exist.

Communication problems vs boundary indifference

Real Social Skills

These things are different:

  • Difficulty reading social cues
  • Indifference to other people’s boundaries

These get conflated all over the place, in part because they both lead to breaking certain social expectations. But they’re actually fundamentally different (although it’s possible for someone to have both problems)

Both of these things get called social awkwardness. This causes a lot of problems, in particular:

  • People are pressured to accept boundary-violating behavior as innocuous awkwardness
  • People who are more innocently awkward are read as threats because people can’t tell the difference

People who don’t care about other people’s boundaries often actually have exceptionally *good* abilities to read social cues, for instance:

  • Creepy guys in geek space tend to know exactly how much they can harass women without being expelled from the space
  • And they’re really good at staying just shy of that line
  • And these dudes often get referred to as just awkward, and women get pressured to accommodate their boundary violations

So, if you want to create spaces that are safe for good people who have trouble reading social cues:

  • Stop tolerating boundary violations
  • Start making your spaces more accessible
  • Use interaction badges as a way to help people understand who welcomes interaction and who doesn’t
  • Wait a few extra seconds in conversations to give people who process language slowly a chance to speak
  • Don’t insist that people make eye contact
  • When you’re organizing loud events, create quiet space people can retreat to
  • Create multiple ways of contacting event or space organizers (phone, email, etc.) Some forms of communication are very difficult for some people, and spaces are more inclusive if there are more options

A follow up: When you’re the one who wants forgiveness

Real Social Skills

Sometimes, you hurt someone in a way that is dealbreaking. I think most people will probably do this at some point during the course of their life. Not to the same degree, and not with the same culpability, but it’s something that everyone is capable of doing.

If you do that, it’s important not to put pressure on the person you hurt to forgive you.

If they’ve asked you not to contact them, respect that. Even if you think that you understand what the problem was and you’ve now solved it. Even if you think you’re trustworthy now. Even if what you really want is a chance to apologize. 

People you’ve hurt don’t owe you their attention, and they don’t owe it to you to help you learn to be a better person. They don’t owe you help getting atonement.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Don’t keep hurting the person with constant invasive attempts to apologize or fix things.

Sometimes you can’t make things right. Some things can’t be undone; some damage can’t be fixed.

What you can do is move on, and learn from the experience. You can learn what you did wrong, and figure out how to never do it again. And you can build a life in which you are good to others, while respecting that the person you hurt is no longer part of it.

A short additional point about forgiveness

Real Social Skills

You can get distance without forgiving the person who hurt you.

In in particular, you can get past a point of being consumed by anger without forgiving the person who hurt you.

Because your recovery is not about that person. It’s about you. And you don’t have to forgive them to get them out of the center of your emotional life.

Sometimes distance is better than forgiveness

Real Social Skills

Sometimes, someone hurts you in a way that’s permanently and forver dealbreaking.

Some people will tell you that you have to forgive the person who hurt you in order to move on. Sometimes, they will put lots of pressure on you and tell you that if you’re still suffering, it’s your own fault for bearing a grudge.

But… you don’t have to forgive someone to get distance. You can do that by creating a boundary. Sometimes that means you limit contact with them to areas in which they’re safe for you. Sometimes that means you break off contact entirely. In any case, it’s something you can do unilaterally. 

You can break away and build a life that has nothing to do with them. They don’t have to loom large in your life forever. 

And you don’t have to get closure or resolution or anything like that in order to move on. What you have to do is move on and do other things.

It takes time and it doesn’t fix everything (neither does forgiveness, despite cultural tropes). But it allows you to build space for yourself, without that person’s hurt taking over everything. And you don’t have to forgive them or do anything at all regarding them to get that space.

Your life is about you, not the person who hurt you.